T he first time Orso sees the new maid, he thinks she is a living doll Not in the dated American slang sense-with which he is familiar be- cause he was once married to a woman from New England (that overeducated and thorny beauty would never have used the phrase, but somehow in her chilly Puritan environs he brushed against it and picked it up like a burr)-but in a literal sense: she resembles a doll. The maid's name is Caterina Zupancic, and she is Romanian, like so many of the maids in Turin these days, the ones whom Orso hears his wife, Lili, and her friends discussing in minute detail, as women always discuss their domestic help. Each maid is invariably referred to not by name but as either la co!f- short for collaboratrice familiare, or fam- ily helper-or la ragazza, the girl. This particular girl has a flat, almost per- fectly round face. Her cheeks, slightly scarred by acne, have a puffy droop that suggests childish sullenness or a case of the mumps. Then there are black eyes that seem to be set flush with the surface of her skin, a conventional rose- bud mouth, and, barely restrained with a plastic clip, an almost inhumanly abundant mass of black hair, thick and wiry, with a coarse gleam that makes it look synthetic. Like the most successful maids, she is not beautiful and not too young. If she is a doll-Orso amuses himself by thinking-she is a slightly battered one, dragged around by the legs, left out in the rain, undressed with the cruel energy of an excessively loving lit- tle mistress. The interview takes place, irritatingly, in Orso's study-irritatingly because he hates the way that Lili, wise in so many other matters, drags him into the endless hiring and firing of their foreign domes- tic workers. The girl is wearing a care- fully pressed pair of jeans that delin- eate a sturdy, flat bottom; also a pair of worn an...1de boots and a blouse of some cheap flowered material whose large col- lar suggests a convent uniform. Her doc- uments-reassuringly in order-say that she is thirty-two, but she stands in front of Orso's desk with her spine straíght z- and her hands clasped behind her back like a pupil at a school recitation. With her eyes cast down, she tells him, in a 5 high fluting voice, that she was trained as lli a nurse, and Lili nods approvingly in the background. Also standing and grinning in the background is Milan, the Roma- nian handyman who found Caterina for them when their previous maid quit. Milan, a wiry rascal with rings in both ears, is married but a notorious woman- izer among the maids of the neighbor- hood, and he is staring wolfishly at Cate- rina. When the interview is over and the girl turns to go, Orso sees Milan slyly pinch her upper arm. Caterina flushes a dull red and moves away with a hopeless sort of slowness, like a penned animal, and Orso, who is a warmhearted, impul- sive man, feels an unexpected flash of anger. F or the first three months or so, Lili is enthusiastic about the new maid, who is so much better than the string of disasters they've had over the past year, since Pernotta, the faithful Sardinian who'd been with them for eight years, decamped to marry a tobacconist from Bolzano. Since then, there have been of- ficious Filipinas who dropped unfin- ished any task that overran union hours; a melancholy Peruvian who sobbed through the ironing; a thickly lipsticked Moldavian, brilliant at cooking, whom they discovered to be a kleptomaniac after she'd stolen two tea kettles; a tall, practical-looking Piedmontese whom they fired after the first dinner, when she served a roast chicken with the head and feet intact. Slapstick catastrophes that have almost convinced the small and ef- ficient Lili that she'd be better off mud- dling through without a live-in servant. But there's the apartment to think ot Two elaborately panelled floors and a terrace at the top of an Art Nouveau house in the Crocetta district: huge, and as complicated and demanding as an el- derly relative. And though Orso and Lili have no children-this is a second mar- riage for Lili, a third for Orso, and Orso's grownup half-American daughters live, respectively, in Palo Alto and Tokyo- they entertain a lot. Orso's job as a sourc- ing consultant to European manufac- turers requires it. The younger son of a family of Padua intellectuals, Orso has many famous friends. Men love him for his generous, convivial nature, while women are drawn to the innocent, greedy look in his boyish blue eyes. Their dinner table has become one of the important salons of Turin, and their parties-two or three a week-are carefully planned to appear casual and relaxed, in a way that appeals to the professors, journalists, C.E.O.s, leftist politicians, and members of the European Parliament who meet at their house. The food may be sim- ple-sometimes Piedmontese, some- times peasant recipes from his and Lili's home region in the Veneto, sometimes Chinese and Singaporean dishes, pre- pared in Lili's quick and expert fashion- but the details have to be impeccable with such people. 'Lili finds in Caterina a true "family collaborator," an intelli- gent but unpretentious woman who lis- tens to directions, observes the way her employer wants things, and then swiftly anticipates her desires. A pearl. Awakening at dawn in her comfort- able room under the eaves-a room that, as Lili is quick to point out, is not the usual maid's cell but a former guest room, sunny and well heated, with a first-rate shower and satellite TV- Caterina fixes coffee for Lili and Orso, and has begun putting the house in order by eight o'clock. In the afternoon, she washes and irons, and prepares the eve- ning meal. She is not garrulous and in- trusive, like Pernotta, but as silent and ef- ficient as a Filipina, her presence in a room signalled by the hum of the vac- uum cleaner or by the smell of bleach and water which, in the old-fashioned manner, she uses to clean windows and stone floors. Her constant companion is the low crooning of the radio, set unvaryingly on Radio Maria, the Catholic station. She goes to confession on Thursday af- ternoons at the Romanian church on Via della Consolata, and to Mass early on Sunday mornings at the hilltop ca- thedral of Superga. She never pesters Lili for extra time to go out, as most co!fs her age do, nor is she man-crazy and continually getting calls on a cell phone. The girl seems perfect-like those leg- endary housemaids that grandmothers always reminisce about, who came as or- phans from convents and stayed for a lifetime, until they were just as much a part of the big Veneto farmhouses as the ancient round pillars that flanked the gates. "Wouldn't it be fabulous to have her for life," Lili jokes in bed one night to Orso, who agrees, though he is bored by the subject of maids in general. When Lili gets infatuated with a new girl and THE NEW YORKER, FEBRUARY 16 & 23, 2004 175